Closure
by A Little Rusty
Summary: His feet are firmly on the earth but they still barely touch it.


She doesn't know how they ended up like this. In their fifty's and still barely ready to talk about what happened some twelve years ago. She doesn't know how but she's sure that he started it. He always did.

_I'm too old for this_, she thinks.

She kicks the ground from where she's leaning against the wall, sending a tiny pebble at him. He catches it easy, the arrow on his forehead had always been her favorite target.

"I'm mad at you," she starts but it doesn't come even close so she tries again, "more upset and disappointed actually." She says it with a casual shrug of her shoulders like it didn't bother her... like it doesn't bother her.

He doesn't say a word but he does step a bit closer. She knows this because she's staring at his feet. And even though they're firmly on the earth, they still barely touch it. This makes her unsurprisingly upset. Like she wants to hit him and just break him. Because it's so Tenzin and that just makes her feel upset and all the more violent. Because she lost him.

She takes in a deep breath and is greeted with the scent of him. Familiar and makes her bones ache greatly. Fifty and he still makes her black heart stutter in beats.

She finally looks at him and she wonders of it's accusing because the first thing out of his mouth was, "We were growing apart." and she wants nothing but to hit him soundly. He should know by now that if he pushed her enough, she would have bended. She always had. For him. She was stubborn but for him, she would do anything. _She would do anything. _This makes her even more upset. Did he ever feel the same? It all confuses her and makes her so _so_ insecure. _No one_ made Lin Beifong insecure. She grits her teeth.

"It would have been better if she was a bender," she's staring at his feet again. "That way I wouldn't feel so cheated, defeated... worthless." She meant it to sound like a joke but she hears her own bitterness instead.

She looks at his aging face and they're tears in his eyes.

"Why are _you_ crying?" she hisses out. "You left me, _remember_?"

The lines on his face are more pronounced now. She remembers fondly waking up to a less wrinkled image of it some twelve years ago. She frowns some more. Her heart swells with regret, not for the first time. She hasn't held his hand in ages, hasn't laughed with him in so long, didn't get to see him age. And the past twelve years gas been filled with so many "hasn't"s and "didn't"s, that she stops thinking about it.

"Lin." she closes her eyes to stop her own tears. She would have killed for him to say her name like that again but now... but now it just makes her want to cry.

"Lin-" but she cuts him off.

"You broke my heart, you married someone else, you left me and you never loved me. Because if you did, you wouldn't have left. You were my best friend, couldn't you have at least left me that?" she thought when she'd finally say it to him she would be screaming bloody murder but she's surprised that her voice is barely a whisper.

Fifty and he still makes her feel like a girl who just got her heart broken.

This was closure for her. To finally accuse him of all the shit he did to her. It's so cathartic that she feels herself breath easier.

But suddenly his feet are all the more closer and her face pressed to his chest. Some tears fall because she knows what's coming next.

"You know why I did all those things. Don't pretend you don't. Don't pretend like I left you, like I don't love you, like you didn't mean anything to me... You didn't want kids and it was my fate to rebuild my race," she misses his soft _soft_ voice.

Silence follows.

"I should have begged you to stay," she says to his chest.

It's his turn to give a chuckle of his own. It's melancholic and wistful. The rumbling in his chest so familiar to her that her arms circle him tighter.

He understands her more than she likes to admit really.

"We both knew you were never going to beg."

So, there they were. Two souls... finally _finally_ content.

Because even if their hearts didn't want it, their souls knew this... was how it's suppose to be.

Time to accept that they didn't end up together, I guess. And it really is sad... fate and shit. Fuck it. I'll write a happier one soon!


End file.
